The Sound and the Fury: A Tale of Two FamiliesThe Sound and the Fury, one of William Faulkner’s most celebrated novels, is the story of the Compson family and its inevitable and somewhat tragic downfall. The Compsons, a family which once thrived in distinction and promoted traditional Southern ideals, are doomed to collapse from the beginning of Faulkner’s tale, and the story follows them as they creep slowly toward their demise. Beginning the story from the perspective of Benjy, the youngest of the Compsons, born with some sort of mental deficiency, Faulkner introduces the chaos and dysfunction that plagues the family. Benjy’s thoughts are muddled and, at times, nonsensical, much like the Compson family itself, which contains characters who both love and loathe one another and themselves at different times throughout the book. The family dwells in a state of disorder, self-absorption, and dysfunction, brushing aside its once-treasured Southern values, like family honor and strength, gentlemanly integrity, and feminine purity. This is not to say, however, that no sense of honor, strength, or order is present within the story. Existing alongside the Compsons are the Gibsons, a black family whose members function as servants for the Compsons as well as striking contrasts to the Compson characters. The Gibsons, in almost direct disagreement with the characteristics of the Compsons, are a family of responsibility, both to themselves and to others, as well as of honor, strength, and stability. In creating the Gibson family to coexist with and sharply contrast the Compsons, Faulkner effectively spotlights the flaws in the Compson family members—flaws which eventually bring about their downfall.

Faulkner begins to foreshadow the Compson family’s unfortunate end as early as in the first chapter of the book, as he starts to highlight the flaws of the individual characters. The first, possibly most obvious, imperfection is shown in the first section’s storyteller,...

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...community so they are all comfortable around people.
Family number two had twins and one boy was deaf. The parents came home all disappointed and the mothers parents were deaf. They decided to have the implant done for there child but the deaf grand parents didn’t agree because they are blessed. The grandmother said I will raise the deaf child and the mother can go away. The parents of the new born wanted their child to explore sounds and learn about the real world. They finally go and get it done.
I would personally would not want to get it done for my new born or 4 year old because god blessed them. I believe that there is another world after we live here when we die. God will give those children a lot of things in that world what ever they didn’t think of. If they are deaf , it isn’t that bad to live without hearing because there so many services that the children would get such as sign language and many more.
Movie: Sound and Fury
Woman is telling a child about a cochlear implant.
A deaf family. Ocean, sea gull. "Everything makes a sound." says the woman. The child speaks unintelligently on the phone, telling Amanda that she is getting an implant.
A man with wife and children says he wants to be deaf and is happy that al three of his children are deaf, too. He was upset when his five year old child wanted an implant, so she could communicate with hearing people. The father is scared that...

...THE SOUND AND THE FURY
William Faulkner's background influenced him to write the unconventional novel The Sound and the Fury. One important influence on the story is that Faulkner grew up in the South. The Economist magazine states that the main source of his inspiration was the passionate history of the American South, centered for him in the town of Oxford, Mississippi, where he lived most of his life. Similarly, Faulkner turns Oxford and its environs, "my own little postage stamp of native soil," into Yoknapatawpha County, the mythical region in which he sets the novel (76). In addition to setting, another influence on the story is Faulkner's own family. He had three brothers, black servants, a mother whose family was not as distinguished as her husband's, a father who drank a lot, and a grandmother called Damuddy who died while he was young. In comparison, the novel is told from the point of view of the three Compson brothers, shows the black servant Dilsey as a main character, has Mrs.! Compson complain about how her family is beneath her husband's, portrays Mr. Compson as a alcoholic, and names the children's grandmother Damuddy who also dies while they are young. Perhaps the most important influence on the story is Faulkner's education, or lack thereof. He never graduated from high school, let alone college, and in later life wryly described himself as "the world's oldest sixth grader." He took insistent...

...
William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury is a story of the decline of the Compson family. The novel follows Benjamin, Quentin and Jason as they each try to handle the fall of their family and the loss of their sister Caddy in different ways. Through the eyes and minds of the brothers one begins to see the complex views and thoughts that the brothers form over time. Faulkner stresses many central ideas that help our understanding of the complexity of the family. Among the central ideas Faulkner stresses the differing views and attitudes of the brothers towards society, their complex stream of consciousness and how their views are impacted by society.
Faulkner uses a variety of stream of consciousness to differentiate the brothers thought processes. Benjamin, the youngest of the Compson family and the first narrator, speaks in simple terms through a limited vocabulary due to his mental disability. Benjy’s thoughts are connected through simple images in a disorganized way. Quentin, the oldest of the Compson family and the second narrator, has a chaotic detailed thought process. Quentin is quick to travel from idea to idea quickly. Jason, the middle bother and the third narrator, has the easiest conscious to follow. Jason is very one track minded and does not often think back to the past because he is focused on issues of the present. Though Jason remembers events from time to time his mind doesn’t focus on those events like Benjy and...

...The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner has been hailed by numerous critics and readers alike as "a deliberately conceived and superlatively executed work (Millgate)." Not only was it an outstanding example of the "stream of consciousness" method of narration, it was in keeping with the modernist trends of implied themes and fragmentation. Faulkner also seems to have had an understanding of the Freudian theory of personality which shows in his writing. The four Compson children are examples of the different personality components and of how their inability to function together as a whole destroys the last of the Compson family. Quentin and Jason IV, the two male children who aren't mentally deficient, both have imbalanced personalities, but their respective deficiencies causes them to be diametrically opposed. Exploration and application of Freud's personality structure will illustrate the areas of their psyche that are underdeveloped or lacking and the ramifications of these deficiencies in their lives.
Sigmund Freud's conception of personality consists of three entities; the id, ego, and superego. The id is the most fundamental of the three. It is characterized as "the reservoir of instinctual psychic energy, or libido (Psychology Today 408)." It is the depository of the innate instinctual drives and always seeks immediate gratification while avoiding pain, known as the "pleasure principle."(Hilgard 478) It is divided into two instincts,...

...Benjy's Character in The Sound and the Fury
In the novel, The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, Benjy is an important character throughout the telling of the story. Benjy is the narrator of the first of four sections. His section is set in the novel's present, April 7, 1928, which is Benjy's thirty-third birthday. Benjy's section of the novel is often hard to understand because all the events are told in the present tense. All of his flashbacks and memories are told as if they were happening in the present. It is left to the reader to decipher what parts of the story are currently happening and what is merely a flashback to past years. Faulkner does this because Benjy's character is severely mentally retarded. Because of this retardation, he seems to have no concept of time and never entirely understands what is going on around him. Benjy constantly has to be taken care of, and this leads to insights into the other characters of the novel. Although Benjy is severely mentally retarded, he is capable of some things. He recognizes different people, especially his caretakers. He also always knows Caddy. Benjy becomes attached to Caddy as he grows up because she is always kind and caring to him. Caddy is always able to calm Benjy down when he gets upset. When Caddy leaves the story, she is usually the reason why Benjy gets so upset.
The capabilities of Benjy are important to the story because he provides an...

..."The Sound and the Fury" Literary Criticism
“Within this rigid world Caddy is at once the focus of order and the instrument of its destruction,” (Bloom 20). Candace Compson, “Caddy”, is the central character of the novel even though none of the narration is seen through her eyes. In each of the three sections by her brothers she is the main subject. Caddy represents something different to everyone one of her brothers, but remains the center of their lives.
“Faulkner was a pioneer in literary modernism, dramatically diverging from the forms and structures traditionally used in novels before his time. Faulkner often employs stream of consciousness narrative, discards any notion of chronological order, uses multiple narrators, shifts between the past and the present tense, and tends toward impossibly long and complex sentences,” (Wall). He practiced many of the techniques in the Sound and the Fury. There is no chronological order to this story at all, leaving it very hard to follow. Faulkner also used multiple narrators throughout the story, and shifted between past and present without any warning.
This story depicts the fall of the Compson family from its former greatness. Through a series of events the family’s lives change completely leaving them a shell of what they used to be. The parents die, Quentin kills himself, Caddy runs away, and a corrupt Jason Jr. is left in control of the family. The only...

...TIME IN THE SOUND AND THE FURY
One of the main realities of human existence is the constant, unceasing passage of time. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner explores this reality of time in many new and unexpected ways as he tells the tragic tail of the Compson family. The Compsons are an old Southern aristocratic family to whom time has not been kind. Years of degeneration mainly stemming from slavery have brought them to the brink of destruction. Most of the story focuses on the Compson children who are undergoing the worst of the social and moral decay. Each of the four children perceives time in a much different way but by far the strangest and most bizarre attitude toward time that is given in the text is held by one of the three male children, Quentin. He is totally consumed with his past and at times can think of nothing else. He also becomes determined to stop time itselfa futile effort that will eventually force him to take his own life. Quentin's obsession with the past and with the passage of time is a central theme of not only the Quentin section but of the entire book, and it is the key to understanding what Faulkner is trying to say about the decay of Southern culture and traditions.
To fully understand the motif of time in the Quentin section it is first necessary to compare it with the different ways in which Faulkner uses time in the other three sections. The first...

...American Literature1900-1945
Innovative Techniques in The Sound and the Fury
The Sound and the Fury has been seen as an "example par excellence of modernist American fiction" (Cohen). Its publication represented a watershed in American literature as it introduced several modernist techniques among which: the destruction of chronological order, the division of the perspectives, the increased number of narrators, the free association technique, the stream of consciousness.
I have selected three fragments from the first three sections of the novel in order to highlight some of these new literary devices. Each fragment represents the corresponding narrator point of view about the event that marked the beginnig of the decline of the Compson family-Caddy's virginity loss.
The first fragment comes from the section "April 7th, 1928" where gradually we find out about the Compson tragedy. The narrator- Benjy a youngest son of the family, also a thirty-three year man afflicted by idiocy-has no concept of time or morality. Thus in his narration the present and the past fuse in indiscernible ways making the comprehension of the plot difficult to follow. Benjy's memories are blending with the present happenings or amalgamate with each other. The events are narrated in the present tense which renders whatever claim of chronology futile. He says that he could "hear the fire and the roof" and then he could "could hear...

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